10 ms·

... Nothing came of it, but I took the code and shoved it into my back pocket for a rainy day ... You can't really do this. Depends on your employment contract

... Nothing came of it, but I took the code and shoved it into my back pocket for a rainy day ... You can't really do this. Depends on your employment contract but code you write for an employer is usually copyright to them ... My first reaction was to publish the code on Github ... You can't really do that either.

bastawhiz 3y ago
I mean, I asked at the time, and I did it. If either company wants to start a legal fight over a pile of code that neither of them wanted that's old enough to be in elementary school, they know how to reach me.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tempaway85751 3y ago
  Fair enough. But I'll leave my comment there as general advice for other readers enjoyed the article, the bit about Excel circular ref linear regression was wild
- lowbloodsugar 3y ago
  The problem is that you are claiming ownership of this code and by making it available on GitHub under an MIT license you are claiming that you have the right to do so. If I take that code and make a billion dollar business out of it, Box or Uber could then claim a share of it. That's the kind of things that companies do with the lawyers on retainer. I then sue you for falsely claiming that you own it. You are particularly fucked because, thanks to this thread, you can't claim that you didn't know. Even in California the "I wrote it on my own time" doesn't apply to software that relates to an employer's core business. In other places, like Washington State, you could be employed to write TPS reports and write a video game at home, and your employer would own that too. IANAL but I have paid for advice on this very topic. I suggest you pay one too.
  - grepfru_it 3y ago
    Big facts
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    Excel does not relate to Ubers’ core business. I’m nearly 100% certain we can look back at this comment in 20 years and find that absolutely nothing happened.
    - lowbloodsugar 3y ago
      The author explains how analyzing and presenting data was worth millions of dollars. The author documents how a senior executive instructed him to write excel. It is clearly their core business. Also, and this comes back to the fantasy/denial/wishful-thinking aspect here, neither I nor the law says core business. That's a word that you added. If you did it as part of your job, then it is, by definition, part of their business. I am also nearly 100% certain we can look back at this comment in 20 years and find nothing happened, but only because nobody will take this code and make a billion dollar business. If they did, I guarantee there would be a law suit.
      - user_named 3y ago
        Excel is not their före business. That executive knows nothing. This is an example why you need product managers and engineers don't talk to users.
      - ncallaway 3y ago
        > neither I nor the law says core business That’s just factually false. You specifically wrote: > Even in California the "I wrote it on my own time" doesn't apply to software that relates to an employer's ***core*** business. You can’t complain about people being “wishful” or in “denial” when they are quoting you. Maybe California law is silent in the topic, but Aeolus wasn’t the person who introduced that specific phrase.
        lowbloodsugar 3y ago
- adastra22 3y ago
  [flagged]
- wodenokoto 3y ago
  I’d recommend you update the article on those two points, because because as it is now, the article makes it sound like you stole code from both Box and Uber.
- benjaminwootton 3y ago
  I don’t think its relevant that the code is old. The code is owned by the entity that’s paid for it. I also found that party of the essay really surprising.
- delusional 3y ago
  This seems like a reasonable amount of pragmatism. As with most things in contract law, it's not meaningfully illegal unless some claimant is actually going to enforce it. You give enough context in the post to alert at reader that they should be careful of using it. Thanks for sharing a cool story.
xwdv 3y ago
It’s trivial to tell ChatGPT to rewrite the code base so it not longer resembles the original and then publish as a new thing. So yea, you can.
- HPsquared 3y ago
  Derived work
- xpe 3y ago
  Trivial to ask for a ChatGPT rewrite. Not trivial to make sure it works.
migf 3y ago
I was also absolutely gob smacked at this. Will they care? Probably not. Are you putting yourself at the absolute mercy of them deciding not to care? Absolutely. I would have a hard time sleeping... like this would be like being in IT and knowing the backups were bullshit.
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  Is this a thing in the US? Here, if the code was written of your own volition outside of work hours then it's yours.
  - migf 3y ago
    It depends on your employment agreement or contract. Most contracts I have seen say that any IP you develop related to what you're doing at work is the employers.
    - adastra22 3y ago
      It only depends on your employment agreement in the other direction. Work done for hire is by default owned by your employer under federal law. For salaried employees it doesn't matter if it is done during working hours. The employment agreement can give up this right for things not related to the company's core business, and I usually insist on that in my agreements. But that is not the default behavior.
      - Dylan16807 3y ago
        Surely someone has to ask for it before it's work done "for hire".
        adastra22 3y ago
        I usually insist that personal and open source work done outside of the product areas I work on are not company owned. Otherwise if I work on financial software at a bank, and then at home I work on defi/blockchain based financial stuff, I could be setting up a liability for me or my users.
thebradbain 3y ago
Cool -- if one of the companies wants to issue a takedown request, they're free to make the case for it. It's funny there's this idea that a company _might_ be potentially injured over code they do not want or know they had being made open source by its actual author, even though many of those companies will gladly use open-source tooling without ever contributing anything back. Perhaps more soundly, though, in California – where Uber is headquartered – IP/Copyright for code is a huge legal question that the state and federal Supreme Court has no clear answer to. Sure, you obviously can't secretly clone Uber's entire stack, slap a new company logo on it, and start up as a competitor. But if you, as an author, wrote some code for a company under an IP agreement, then no-longer worked at said company, and then later adapted and expanded upon that code (or even started over, with the knowledge of what you learned from others' work): are you, at the originator, not legally allowed to be inspired by your past work? That's not something you, me, or even the company could decide.
- andrewxdiamond 3y ago
  There are gray areas but I do not think you are in one. > and then later adapted and expanded upon that code (or even started over, with the knowledge of what you learned from others' work) These are extremely different scenarios. Starting with a copyrighted material and modifying it is not at all the same as reading material and starting over. The first is violating copyright, the second is a derivative work. If I read everything correctly, what you describe doing is taking code owned by the first company and modifying it for the second company. That’s not at all a gray area. It’s a copyright violation. You the engineer sign away your rights to the code when you built it for company 1 while employed by them. Their employment contract for-sure states they own any work produced by you during your employment, and you agreed to this. If the first project was done off of company time, posted publicly on a private account, you might have a claim to the rights. I know you’ve dug your trench too deeply to change your mind at this point, but anyone reading your comments should know what you did was technically illegal and can get people in legal hot water.
  - thebradbain 3y ago
    I wrote the comment above, though I'm not the author of the code that you appear to think I am. But I am in agreement with him. > Their employment contract for-sure states they own any work produced by you during your employment, and you agreed to this. There are many open legal questions as to where this line is drawn. Surely the line falls somewhere between "every character I've ever typed on a keyboard" and "the verbatim code". I personally don't think he's crossed it. IP ownership is much more complex than portrayed in HBO's Silicon Valley. That is my opinion. Furthermore, when I worked at GitHub (now acquired by Microsoft, so I'm sure things have changed drastically) -- there were very lax IP ownership agreements in the employment contracts around code ownership, because the legal department was worried that if found in any way conflicting with California law it would render the entire IP claims null and void (which does have precedent in California). The point is we don't know, and I think OP would know better than us if it was disallowed or not.
sushiburps 3y ago
Well, he just... did
Aeolun 3y ago
Different person, but when I asked if I could publish code as open source (where appropriate), I was told that that’s fine, as long as I don’t associate it with the company in any way (e.g. non-company specific stuff is ok).
kqr 3y ago
I agree this seems fairly clearly illegal. That said, I think OP is morally in the right here, and I wish I had the guts to do similar things. Sharing code is a good thing. Helping one company innovate using code that another company chose to ignore is also a good thing.
- egwor 3y ago
  I'm not sure how we weigh up the morals here. If you've done something using a companies resources (laptop, desk, chair etc.) and they're paying you and the contract says they own it I don't see how you can have a moral high ground. Maybe there should be some way to allow these ownership concepts to expire so that society benefits overall but right now we don't have that.
  - thecodedmessage 3y ago
    When property does not serve its purpose it is no longer morally binding, just legally. And that’s if you convince me proprietary code ownership has any moral standing at all. Sometimes, I follow the law not because it’s particularly the right thing to do but because I don’t want to get in any trouble.
  - bastawhiz 3y ago
    > If you've done something using a companies resources (laptop, desk, chair etc.) You're making a huge assumption that this is what happened.
    - paustint 3y ago
      At one point in the article there is a photograph of a chair in the uber hallway and a caption indicating that the couch in the picture (or one similar to it) was where most of the work was done for this project.

bastawhiz 3y ago

I mean, I asked at the time, and I did it. If either company wants to start a legal fight over a pile of code that neither of them wanted that's old enough to be in elementary school, they know how to reach me.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tempaway85751 3y ago
Fair enough. But I'll leave my comment there as general advice for other readers enjoyed the article, the bit about Excel circular ref linear regression was wild
lowbloodsugar 3y ago
The problem is that you are claiming ownership of this code and by making it available on GitHub under an MIT license you are claiming that you have the right to do so. If I take that code and make a billion dollar business out of it, Box or Uber could then claim a share of it. That's the kind of things that companies do with the lawyers on retainer. I then sue you for falsely claiming that you own it. You are particularly fucked because, thanks to this thread, you can't claim that you didn't know. Even in California the "I wrote it on my own time" doesn't apply to software that relates to an employer's core business. In other places, like Washington State, you could be employed to write TPS reports and write a video game at home, and your employer would own that too. IANAL but I have paid for advice on this very topic. I suggest you pay one too.
- grepfru_it 3y ago
  Big facts
- Aeolun 3y ago
  Excel does not relate to Ubers’ core business. I’m nearly 100% certain we can look back at this comment in 20 years and find that absolutely nothing happened.
  - lowbloodsugar 3y ago
    The author explains how analyzing and presenting data was worth millions of dollars. The author documents how a senior executive instructed him to write excel. It is clearly their core business. Also, and this comes back to the fantasy/denial/wishful-thinking aspect here, neither I nor the law says core business. That's a word that you added. If you did it as part of your job, then it is, by definition, part of their business. I am also nearly 100% certain we can look back at this comment in 20 years and find nothing happened, but only because nobody will take this code and make a billion dollar business. If they did, I guarantee there would be a law suit.
    - user_named 3y ago
      Excel is not their före business. That executive knows nothing. This is an example why you need product managers and engineers don't talk to users.
    - ncallaway 3y ago
      > neither I nor the law says core business That’s just factually false. You specifically wrote: > Even in California the "I wrote it on my own time" doesn't apply to software that relates to an employer's ***core*** business. You can’t complain about people being “wishful” or in “denial” when they are quoting you. Maybe California law is silent in the topic, but Aeolus wasn’t the person who introduced that specific phrase.
      - lowbloodsugar 3y ago
adastra22 3y ago
[flagged]
wodenokoto 3y ago
I’d recommend you update the article on those two points, because because as it is now, the article makes it sound like you stole code from both Box and Uber.
benjaminwootton 3y ago
I don’t think its relevant that the code is old. The code is owned by the entity that’s paid for it. I also found that party of the essay really surprising.
delusional 3y ago
This seems like a reasonable amount of pragmatism. As with most things in contract law, it's not meaningfully illegal unless some claimant is actually going to enforce it. You give enough context in the post to alert at reader that they should be careful of using it. Thanks for sharing a cool story.

xwdv 3y ago

It’s trivial to tell ChatGPT to rewrite the code base so it not longer resembles the original and then publish as a new thing. So yea, you can.

HPsquared 3y ago
Derived work
xpe 3y ago
Trivial to ask for a ChatGPT rewrite. Not trivial to make sure it works.

migf 3y ago

I was also absolutely gob smacked at this. Will they care? Probably not. Are you putting yourself at the absolute mercy of them deciding not to care? Absolutely. I would have a hard time sleeping... like this would be like being in IT and knowing the backups were bullshit.

sebzim4500 3y ago
Is this a thing in the US? Here, if the code was written of your own volition outside of work hours then it's yours.
- migf 3y ago
  It depends on your employment agreement or contract. Most contracts I have seen say that any IP you develop related to what you're doing at work is the employers.
  - adastra22 3y ago
    It only depends on your employment agreement in the other direction. Work done for hire is by default owned by your employer under federal law. For salaried employees it doesn't matter if it is done during working hours. The employment agreement can give up this right for things not related to the company's core business, and I usually insist on that in my agreements. But that is not the default behavior.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      Surely someone has to ask for it before it's work done "for hire".
      - adastra22 3y ago
        I usually insist that personal and open source work done outside of the product areas I work on are not company owned. Otherwise if I work on financial software at a bank, and then at home I work on defi/blockchain based financial stuff, I could be setting up a liability for me or my users.

thebradbain 3y ago

Cool -- if one of the companies wants to issue a takedown request, they're free to make the case for it. It's funny there's this idea that a company _might_ be potentially injured over code they do not want or know they had being made open source by its actual author, even though many of those companies will gladly use open-source tooling without ever contributing anything back. Perhaps more soundly, though, in California – where Uber is headquartered – IP/Copyright for code is a huge legal question that the state and federal Supreme Court has no clear answer to. Sure, you obviously can't secretly clone Uber's entire stack, slap a new company logo on it, and start up as a competitor. But if you, as an author, wrote some code for a company under an IP agreement, then no-longer worked at said company, and then later adapted and expanded upon that code (or even started over, with the knowledge of what you learned from others' work): are you, at the originator, not legally allowed to be inspired by your past work? That's not something you, me, or even the company could decide.

andrewxdiamond 3y ago
There are gray areas but I do not think you are in one. > and then later adapted and expanded upon that code (or even started over, with the knowledge of what you learned from others' work) These are extremely different scenarios. Starting with a copyrighted material and modifying it is not at all the same as reading material and starting over. The first is violating copyright, the second is a derivative work. If I read everything correctly, what you describe doing is taking code owned by the first company and modifying it for the second company. That’s not at all a gray area. It’s a copyright violation. You the engineer sign away your rights to the code when you built it for company 1 while employed by them. Their employment contract for-sure states they own any work produced by you during your employment, and you agreed to this. If the first project was done off of company time, posted publicly on a private account, you might have a claim to the rights. I know you’ve dug your trench too deeply to change your mind at this point, but anyone reading your comments should know what you did was technically illegal and can get people in legal hot water.
- thebradbain 3y ago
  I wrote the comment above, though I'm not the author of the code that you appear to think I am. But I am in agreement with him. > Their employment contract for-sure states they own any work produced by you during your employment, and you agreed to this. There are many open legal questions as to where this line is drawn. Surely the line falls somewhere between "every character I've ever typed on a keyboard" and "the verbatim code". I personally don't think he's crossed it. IP ownership is much more complex than portrayed in HBO's Silicon Valley. That is my opinion. Furthermore, when I worked at GitHub (now acquired by Microsoft, so I'm sure things have changed drastically) -- there were very lax IP ownership agreements in the employment contracts around code ownership, because the legal department was worried that if found in any way conflicting with California law it would render the entire IP claims null and void (which does have precedent in California). The point is we don't know, and I think OP would know better than us if it was disallowed or not.

sushiburps 3y ago

Well, he just... did

Aeolun 3y ago

Different person, but when I asked if I could publish code as open source (where appropriate), I was told that that’s fine, as long as I don’t associate it with the company in any way (e.g. non-company specific stuff is ok).

kqr 3y ago

I agree this seems fairly clearly illegal. That said, I think OP is morally in the right here, and I wish I had the guts to do similar things. Sharing code is a good thing. Helping one company innovate using code that another company chose to ignore is also a good thing.

egwor 3y ago
I'm not sure how we weigh up the morals here. If you've done something using a companies resources (laptop, desk, chair etc.) and they're paying you and the contract says they own it I don't see how you can have a moral high ground. Maybe there should be some way to allow these ownership concepts to expire so that society benefits overall but right now we don't have that.
- thecodedmessage 3y ago
  When property does not serve its purpose it is no longer morally binding, just legally. And that’s if you convince me proprietary code ownership has any moral standing at all. Sometimes, I follow the law not because it’s particularly the right thing to do but because I don’t want to get in any trouble.
- bastawhiz 3y ago
  > If you've done something using a companies resources (laptop, desk, chair etc.) You're making a huge assumption that this is what happened.
  - paustint 3y ago
    At one point in the article there is a photograph of a chair in the uber hallway and a caption indicating that the couch in the picture (or one similar to it) was where most of the work was done for this project.